


The Dragon and The Dream

by OMGitsgreen



Series: The Tales and Dreams of Dragons [7]
Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Angst, Gen, I didn't want to make this a series but here I am, Origin Story, Original Dragon Warriors - Freeform, Reincarnation, Shuten was a badass for sure, green dragon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 23:55:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3747898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OMGitsgreen/pseuds/OMGitsgreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He needed it. Once more he needed to fly. Even if it meant that it would be the last time he breathed, because it was that dream that he had always lived for, and if he couldn’t live within it, then certainly the life he was living wasn’t worth the effort." A story of the adolescence of Shuten, the Original Green Dragon, who believes himself to live in a world of strangers and lives for the dream of the sky. An If The Sky Could Dream side story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dragon and The Dream

**Author's Note:**

> So I have given Shuten a lot of shit in my writing, and make him unlikable I think. I generally feel like if I’m going to do that then I need to give a reason why and make his actions more understandable at least to me. So I started off by writing a headcanon which eventually became this. I wasn’t going to make an original-origin stories series, but damnit these characters made me do it!  
> So anyways, here you go. A Shuten-centric origin story headcanon. Hurray. I now feel bad for ever being mean to this character.

_"From wonder into wonder existence opens."_  
-Lao Tzu

* * *

Shuten looked upon the sky and saw endless possibilities, the infinite stars, the horizon which stretched as far as the eyes could see.  
And sometimes, Shuten ran. Faster than any other boy in the village he lived in. Shuten ran and ran until his heart pounded and his lungs burned, and his legs felt as light as a feather and he spread open his arms and jumped from the water fall where the cliff ran into the lake and even if it was just for a moment he flew. The air rushed around him and whipped his body, he soared like one of the birds he so desperately wished he could be, and everything stopped, there was no hunger or pain or fear, there was simply him and then there was the sky. 

For a moment he flew, but then he always fell back to earth.

* * *

The sickness came with the summer heat. 

It started with the weaver who did his deals with a merchant from outside of the village. It started with a terrible fever and chills that swept his body and made him so weak that eventually he could no longer raise his head. The wet cough that brought forth blood brought alarm, and when his fingers and toes began to rot the village was seized in a great panic. Finally the weaver seized and died with foam and blood dripping from his mouth, ending his own torment, but not before the others in his family had developed the very same fever. 

The village’s dead was overwhelming, and the stink of death and rot and despair filled the very humble village with dread. Fires were built to burn the corpses so they would not spread their illness, but even so the victims grew in number every day and the village became a sepulchral shadow to what it had once been. The elders of the village gathered and before those who remained made an announcement. This plague was the Gods’ wrath upon them and the only way to save those who remained was to offer them a suitable sacrifice.

But Shuten didn’t ever dream they would come for him. 

His father had been a solider, but his arm hung useless at his side now and there was barely any work, and any coin he did make went to the gambling tables in town. His mother had been forced to take up a weaving job, but even so, she herself preferred the bottle to clink. Neither of them loved their son, for that deep of amiable affections can only be given to those once oneself is loved, and Shuten, though he tried, knew that for a fact. But he had at least believed they depended on him and his existence to them was worthy of at least care. So when the elders came and spoke with them that night, and they did not scream or cry, Shuten knew that perhaps even that sentiment was too much. 

“He is our only son.” His father said, gruffly, “You want us to give him up?”

“You will be equally rewarded. In the eyes of the village all of the debts you have accumulated will be considered repaid.” The Elder said, filling Shuten’s gut with lead and nearly making him gag.

“We…we won’t have to be there then, right?” His mother asked and Shuten couldn’t believe what he was hearing. That was his mother’s concern? Not his death?

“No. He will be brought to the shrine in the mountains and chained inside tomorrow, Jun and Han-Woo from the village will escort him there” The Elder said, “You won’t have to be there if you do not wish.”

“Very well.” His father said, and just like that the elders left, silence filled the house, and then his mother and father came into the room to sleep beside him but Shuten lay there, wide awake. 

He had known them all his life, been born from their blood and flesh. Shuten had been scolded many times by the Elder lovingly and he had ruffled his hair. Jun and Han-Woo were both men from the village, only a few years older than Shuten himself. Jun was always playing that silly flute and had taught him a few chords, and Han-Woo was always ready to play a few games dice. And the rest of the village, who he had spent harvests with and played with and fought with for twelve years, they were all desperate for the return of normalcy, and if that meant his sacrifice then they all certainly wished for his death. 

The truth unsettled him, it unmoored Shuten from all that he had known before. A part of him wished that this was a nightmare but he knew that this—this was his reality, this was truth. He was a stranger, living in a house of strangers, and a world full of strangers. Familial and neighborly bonds only lasted until denied three meals and a comfortable night’s sleep, and then it was time to feed the weaker to the dogs. Human bonds were flimsy and unreliable things, like other humans, and they couldn’t be trusted. If he was going to survive, Shuten knew, that he could only rely on himself. 

_Please…please, I’ll give you one more chance. Just make me a bird._ Shuten prayed to the Gods, squeezing his eyes shut fiercely as he contained his wails of grief and inner turmoil. _Make me a bird so I don’t have to be a person anymore. I could fly and be free. That’s all I want. If you don’t do that, then I’ll take matters into my own hands. I don’t care what I have to do, I won’t die. I won’t let anyone kill me. Damn this village to death if need be and everyone in it. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die_  
He stayed like that, curled upon the floor frozen for many hours, screaming his prayers to the heavens in his mind. 

When the pearly light of dawn began to lighten the dark of night, Shuten took his father’s dagger from where he stored his armor and relics of a past life.

* * *

Han-Woo and Jun were walking just in front of him as they went through the forest. They had told him that they were going to go fishing by the river and had invited Shuten, but Shuten also knew that the shrine lay just beyond the stream. They didn’t speak and never looked to Shuten, obviously unable to bear what they were about to do and waiting until they had no other option but to subdue him. And that was fine for Shuten, because he had slowly pulled the dagger from his hilt. He had been waiting as well.

Waiting until the village wouldn’t be able to hear their screams. 

When the river was in sight, Han-Woo and Jun tried to make their move. 

What they didn’t know was Shuten was already waiting for them.

* * *

“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you or sell you as a slave.” The man asked as he sharpened his knife. He was an imposing force, like a typhoon, tall and with a shoulders that looked as if they could carry twenty men. His decorated spear told of his legend, as well as the scars that marred his face and what was visible of his chest. 

“Let me stay. I’ll do anything.” Shuten told the man firmly. The man took his chin within his hands and Shuten glared back, knowing he certainly wasn’t all that imposing himself, a gangly kid barely fifteen, but he had seen hardships ever since he had killed and run away from his village, he had survived, barely, but he had. He knew of hunger so terrible that grass became a suitable substitute for rice, and thirst so fierce a prick of the dagger and blood would have to do, and had killed thrice more since that escape. Innocence had left him long ago (though sometimes, sometimes he would close his eyes and fly into the heavens, away, away from everything and everyone, achieve his greatest wish), and so when this roving mercenary group just so happened to descend upon the village he was staying at, when they tried to capture him, Shuten had taken down four more until he was subdued and brought to their boss. 

“Now look at that expression, boys.” The man chuckled, “Those eyes have seen the true nature of this world. And your hands, well, they reek of blood.”

Suddenly Kang-Dae slapped him, so hard that his cheek went numb, but then at Shuten’s unwavering gaze despite the pain, he let out a ferocious laugh that was echoed by the rest of his enclave.

“I can already tell I like you, kid. You aren’t some backwater hick or pampered city kid. You got the fight in ya.” The leader said before motioning and allowing his goons to let Shuten go. The leader sat back on his chair, very pleased. “My name is Kang-Dae. I am the leader of this group, and what I demand is simple. You will do your job.” 

“Aren’t you mad that I killed your buddies?” Shuten asked and the room erupted into laughter yet again. 

“Buddies? Those four you killed were lowlifes, just like the rest of us and you. We’re all lowlife, and we’re all in it for the money. Money is, after all, the most important thing. Money is power and prestige. Money can get you anything you want. Brotherhood falls apart, but money is the binding which always holds.” Kang-Dae said his eyes dark and cold and like death itself, and Shuten was glad because he didn’t trust anything more than death, “I honestly don’t give a shit if you live or die. But if you want to work, and help me earn more money by you breathing, then be my guest.” 

“Trust me, I’ll earn even your weight back in gold.” Shuten said with a vicious grin.

* * *

Those years were simple. He felt alive when he fought, and when he didn’t his body itched for the battlefield. The mercenaries under Kang-Dae were good enough company, because Shuten understood what they expected of him and in return they offered him support and even companionship in some degrees. Eventually Shuten even succeeded Kang-Dae as leader once his spear became rusty and his footsteps heavy. But he knew that no matter what he did or accomplished in his life he was always alone, a stranger among strangers, living within a world that would have him dead. 

But in his dreams he soared in the sky. Shuten yearned for that dream, needed it so badly that sometimes he spent all his coin on sake to drown himself into stupid slumber so he could just reach it once more. He would look on at it constantly, to the birds which flew out from his grasp. They were free, free from the earth where bodies were sacrificed to sate the whims of the Gods, free from the battle and the stench of death that followed. He needed it. Once more he needed to fly. Even if it meant that it would be the last time he breathed, because it was that dream that he had always lived for, and if he couldn’t live within it, then certainly the life he was living wasn’t worth the effort.

And so he left the mercenaries and wandered, despite how busy they had been since the rising of a red-haired king in the east. Until the forests became familiar and he walked through the skeletal remains of a long-forgotten village, and reached a river bed and a cliff that ran into a lake that had long since been lost. He placed down his spear and pack, stretched his legs, and prepared himself to fly. He looked up to the sky, so blue that it could nearly blind a man who looked upon it, and to that forever longed-for horizon and the impossible dreams it held beyond its curtain. 

When a Green Dragon broke through that veil, Shuten wondered what else was possible.

* * *

“A Dragon Warrior?” Shuten demanded before laughing, “I won’t sacrifice my life for a king. For all I care this place can burn itself to the ground. The world is filled with trash anyways.”

“I do not trust sentiment either, human. For sentiment is easily swayed and can dull a well-trained blade. What I need is a warrior, whose strength and prowess in battle will not be beaten and one who is unbound by those flimsy human connections. In return for your power in protection of the king, I shall grant your greatest wish.”

“And what’s that?” Shuten asked him with a snap. 

“You will soar.” The Green Dragon told him, “You will leap as high as the heavens, and use this strength to defend your king.”

“If…If you can grant that wish, then I shall accept your offer. Please, give me your blood and allow me to become a Dragon Warrior.” 

And so another story began.


End file.
